Yondaime Patch Notes
A/N: Just a series of things Minato suffered as Yondaime (every Hokage does, really). Set in Icarus because the verse where no one dies is my happy place.
Day 72: Official Portrait Hostilities
There are some problems Minato expects as Hokage. Border skirmishes. Mission casualties. Budget disputes. Diplomatic letters that arrive folded in expensive paper and smelling faintly of sandalwood, only for Shikaku to read them twice and announce that, actually, this is a threat.
Then there are the problems Minato does not expect.
This one arrives just after breakfast in the form of an official memorandum from Civilian Administration, delivered by a courier who refuses to meet his eyes.
Minato understands fear. He respects fear. Fear keeps people alive.
Unfortunately, in this case, fear leaves him with a sealed packet, three attached portrait drafts, and a request for his “timely participation in the final approval process for the Fourth Hokage’s commemorative administrative portrait.”
Minato reads the sentence twice.
Then a third time, with less hope.
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸--------
Across the office, Kakashi is stationed near the window in full ANBU gear, mask on, posture perfect, doing an excellent impression of someone who has never been curious about anything in his life. Obito is by the door and failing with his entire body. Rin stands near the bookshelf, professional and composed, except for the small tilt of her head that means she has already begun diagnosing the situation.
“You made a face,” Obito says.
“I did not.”
“You made the face you make when someone gives you a report with seven attachments.”
Minato sets the memo down with great care. “Why am I being commemorated? I am alive.”
Kakashi lifts one gloved hand. “Temporarily.”
Rin elbows him.
Minato looks at her gratefully.
She steps closer, reading over his shoulder. “Maybe it’s for institutional continuity?”
“That sounds worse.”
“It is worse,” Obito agrees cheerfully.
The first portrait sketch shows Minato in the Hokage robes, standing stiffly beneath a dramatic fall of light. The artist has rendered his expression with such solemnity that he looks less like the sitting Hokage and more like a tragic historical figure people mention in exam essays.
Rin considers it. “This one makes you look responsible.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Deeply unhappy,” Obito adds.
Kakashi tilts his head. “Constipated.”
“Kakashi.”
“Respectfully.”
Minato looks at the second sketch.
This one has stronger shadows, sharper cheekbones, and wind in his hair despite the fact that he is indoors. His cloak flares behind him with enough force to suggest either divine intervention or poor window maintenance.
Obito leans in. “That one is cool.”
“It is inaccurate.”
“Cool things usually are.”
“The jaw is wrong,” Kakashi says.
Minato exhales. “Thank you.”
“It should be sharper.”
Minato places the second sketch face-down.
The third draft is softer. Warmer around the eyes. Less battlefield legend, more tired man trying to keep the village from eating itself before dinner. Rin’s attention lingers there the longest, her brow gently creasing.
“That one looks most like you,” she says.
Minato is about to ask what she means by that when the office door opens without a knock.
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
The air changes at once. Kushina enters carrying his bento in one hand and the full force of domestic authority in the other.
Behind her comes Gai, bright-eyed and red-cheeked with effort, balancing a mountain of library books so high they wobble dangerously against his chin. A box of sprinkled doughnuts is wedged under one arm. Somehow, he is also carrying Kushina’s tea, a violently sweet concoction in a lidded cup that smells like honey, milk, cinnamon, and a crime against dentistry.
“Yondaime sama!” Gai says, voice muffled behind the books. “Your youthful lunch escort has arrived!”
Kushina sets the bento on Minato’s desk with a decisive click. “You forgot to eat 'ttebane.”
“I was going to.”
“You were going to look sadly at it at four in the afternoon and call that lunch.”
“That is a pattern, not proof.”
“It is absolutely proof.”
Gai lowers the books onto a side table with the care of someone transporting explosive tags. The table groans. The doughnuts survive. The tea sloshes ominously.
Kushina sees the portraits.
Her eyes sharpen.
“Oh,” she says.
Minato does not like the way she says it.
“Oh?”
She picks up the first sketch between two fingers. “This one makes you look like you’ve never laughed in your life.”
Obito snaps his fingers. “That’s what it was.”
Rin gestures toward the third. “I thought this one was nice.”
Kushina studies it. “This one has potential.”
Minato relaxes.
Then she adds, “The hair is wrong 'ttebane.”
“My hair?”
“They made it too obedient.”
Gai gasps with profound agreement. “Hair should express the fires of the soul!”
Kakashi says, very quietly, “Some more than others.”
Kushina has already taken a brush from Minato’s own ink set and is leaning over the draft. “Eat your lunch.”
“Kushina.”
“Eat. I’m saving your reputation.”
“My reputation is apparently being decided by my hair.”
“Among other things,” Obito adds.
Minato opens the bento because he knows when a battle is lost. The rice is still warm, packed neatly beside grilled fish, pickled vegetables, and the little rolled omelet Kushina makes when she is pretending not to worry.
The smell is familiar enough to soften the hard line of the morning. For three peaceful bites, he almost believes the matter has stabilized.
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
Then the next reviewer arrives.
She is an auntie from the western market district, wrapped in a patterned shawl and righteous indignation, here to complain about daikon prices among other things.
Her complaint is extensive. It involves crop yields, greedy vendors, suspected hoarding, the moral collapse of youth, and a cousin’s neighbor’s son who apparently overcharges widows.
Minato listens carefully. He takes notes. He promises to ask Civilian Supply to look into it.
Then she notices the portraits.
Everything worsens.
“This one is too thin,” she says, tapping the first sketch with one firm finger. “He looks like no one feeds him.”
Kushina points at Minato without looking away. “See?”
“I eat.”
“You negotiate with food,” Rin replies.
“You avoid it during paperwork,” Obito says.
“You forget it exists,” Kakashi adds.
Gai, who has successfully opened the doughnut box and is now offering it around with the solemn generosity of a temple attendant, says, “The body requires nourishment to sustain youthful governance!”
The auntie accepts a sprinkled doughnut, takes one bite, and continues judging the art.
“This one is handsome,” she says of the second sketch, “but too sad. Girls will cry. Mothers will worry. Enemies will think we are emotionally unstable.”
Obito nods. “National security concern.”
Kakashi folds his arms. “Possible morale issue.”
Minato looks toward the ceiling and begins quietly reconsidering every promotion he has ever approved.
The auntie moves to the third sketch. Her expression softens a fraction.
“This one is better,” she says. “Still too thin. But better.”
Kushina writes, in the margin: healthier cheeks?
Minato makes a wounded sound.
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
By late afternoon, the office smells of ink, cooling tea, warm rice, sugar glaze, and the faint metallic bite of too many people’s opinions. The portraits lie scattered across the desk like evidence. Kushina’s corrections bloom across the margins in decisive strokes. Obito has drawn a tiny thumbs-up near the heroic one. Rin has added careful notes about warmth and recognizability. Kakashi’s handwriting, small and brutal, appears beside the second draft with a cloud doodle: excessive wind.
Gai has fallen into a passionate argument with the market auntie about whether sprinkled doughnuts count as nutritionally meaningful if eaten with sufficient enthusiasm.
This is the scene Shikaku walks into.
He pauses in the doorway. His eyes move from Minato, to Kushina, to Team Minato in ANBU gear, to Gai with sugar on his cheek, to the auntie holding a half-eaten doughnut and criticizing the Hokage’s bone structure.
Shikaku raises a brow, “Do I want to know?”
“No,” Minato answers immediately.
Shikaku looks at the portraits. His expression changes in the subtle, terrible way it does when he has found a new problem and already decided it is someone else’s fault.
“We need to go to Records,” he says.
Minato stands so quickly his chair nearly tips over.
“Excellent.”
“It’s a budget issue.”
“Wonderful.”
“You hate budget issues.”
“I have learned gratitude.”
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
The trip to Records takes forty minutes. It involves three ledgers, two missing requisition forms, and one elderly clerk who remembers every Hokage’s filing weaknesses with alarming precision. Minato returns tired, ink-smudged, and foolishly hopeful that his office might have emptied in his absence.
He opens the door.
His office has not emptied, in fact there are additions to the fray: Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru are standing over his desk, reviewing the portraits with the solemn air of less wrinkly council members.
Minato considers closing the door.
It is too late.
Tsunade is holding the first sketch like it owes her money. “Who approved this posture?”
Jiraiya has the second raised at arm’s length, squinting. “The lighting is heroic.”
“The lighting is compensating,” Orochimaru corrects.
Minato steps inside very slowly. “Why are all of you here?”
“Tsunade came to steal medical budget approvals,” Shikaku says from behind him.
“I came to discuss medical budget realities,” Tsunade corrects.
“I followed because I was bored,” Jiraiya adds.
Orochimaru smiles. “I heard there was an autopsy.”
“There is no autopsy,” Minato says.
“On the contrary,” Orochimaru murmurs, looking at the third sketch. “Someone has clearly murdered your image.”
Kushina makes a sound that is almost a cough and absolutely not a cough.
Tsunade slaps the first sketch down. “This one is useless. He looks breakable.”
“I am standing right here.”
“You look worse in person.”
“Thank you, Tsunade ane.”
Jiraiya is still staring at the heroic draft with the pained intensity of a man whose student’s hair has been artistically mishandled. “They didn’t capture the movement.”
“I was sitting for the reference,” Minato says.
“That’s why art must transcend reference.”
Orochimaru’s gaze slides over the exaggerated cloak, the dramatic shadows, the impossible wind. “No one captures the hair. It resists governance.”
Obito whispers, “Like sensei.”
Kakashi whispers back, “Less efficiently.”
Minato hears both of them and decides to choose peace.
For twenty full minutes, the office becomes a battlefield of aesthetic philosophy.
Kushina argues for warmth because people should recognize the man they are asking to protect them. Tsunade argues for authority because enemies do not need encouragement. Jiraiya argues for drama because apparently symbolism matters when one has published novels under three aliases. Orochimaru argues that if Konoha insists on producing propaganda, it should at least have the decency to be unsettling.
The market auntie, somehow still present, argues that the Hokage should look well-fed.
Gai argues for flames.
(No one asked Gai)
Gai argues anyway.
Shikaku contributes exactly once.
“Make him look harder to kill.”
Everyone pauses.
Then, with unnerving unity, they all agree this is reasonable.
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
By the time the office finally empties, Minato has acquired seventeen new comments, two revised drafts, one cold bento, half a box of doughnuts, Kushina’s horrible tea, and what he is fairly certain are three new white hairs.
Jiraiya is the last to leave.
Or rather, he does not leave. He sits on the edge of the desk after everyone else has gone, big hands loose between his knees, looking at the sketches with an expression Minato knows well enough to distrust.
It is the same expression Jiraiya wears when he is about to say something simple and devastating, usually after spending an entire day pretending he is incapable of either.
The office is quieter now. Evening presses blue against the windows. The village below has shifted into its softer sounds: sandals on stone, shop shutters coming down, distant laughter from the market, the faint clatter of dishes from homes where people have remembered to eat dinner at a civilized hour.
Minato gathers the drafts into a neat stack. “If you say the lighting is heroic again, I may defect.”
Jiraiya snorts.
For a while, there is only the rustle of paper.
Then Jiraiya says, “Pick the one the village can live with.”
Minato glances at him.
Jiraiya is looking at the portrait now, not as a writer, or a spy, or a menace with terrible publishing habits, but as his teacher.
“They’re not painting you for you,” he adds. “They’re painting the office. The idea. Something people can point to when they’re scared and say, ‘There. That’s ours.’”
Minato’s hands still on the papers.
“You don’t have to like it,” Jiraiya continues. “But you should choose what kind of comfort you’re willing to become.”
It is, Minato thinks, deeply unfair for Jiraiya to be wise after allowing Orochimaru to say his hair resists governance.
Still, the words settle.
He looks at the drafts again.
The severe one is too distant. The heroic one feels like a stranger wearing his cloak. The third is softer than he would have chosen, warmer around the eyes, less myth than person. Kushina’s brush has corrected the hair into something familiar and alive. Rin’s note in the margin says: this one looks like sensei. Obito has drawn a tiny thumbs-up beside it. Kakashi, in very small handwriting, has written: acceptable.
The auntie has added: cheeks could improve.
Gai has drawn a flame in the corner.
Minato laughs before he can stop himself.
Jiraiya grins. “That one, then?”
Minato looks at the portrait a little longer. He sees the office in it; the fingerprints, the arguments, the ridiculous, impossible tenderness of a village that will complain about his face, his lunch habits, his hair, his posture, his cheekbones, and still ask him to be something they can look toward when the lights go out.
Then he nods.
“That one.”
------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------------🐸------
The next morning, Civilian Administration receives the approved draft with the Hokage’s signature, Kushina’s hair corrections, Team Minato’s marginalia, one market auntie’s nutritional concerns, Tsunade’s note about posture, Shikaku’s security recommendation, Jiraiya’s dramatic lighting request, Gai’s enthusiastic flame, and Orochimaru’s suggestion that the final version include “a more honest sense of mortality.”
The portrait committee requests clarification.
Minato sends back one word.
Approved.